Shadows of Love

by Gail MacMillan

  “I saw them together on the road one day,” I recalled. “Oh, God, she killed Marie and her child as surely as she tried to kill my baby.”

  “And Ida,” Jared further revealed. “She substituted another medicine for her foxglove potion. She’d overheard Barret and Ida talking on several occasions, and she’d become convinced Barret was in some way a Douglas. The only one who seemed aware and in danger of exposing the fact was Ida. She decided it would be best if the old lady did not live too much longer…especially when she discovered she herself was pregnant. And I did nothing to stop her.”

  He tried to move, but pain overcame him, and he sank back with a groan.

  “Rest.” Barret laid a restraining hand on the man’s shoulder. “You can talk later.”

  “No!” Sweat breaking out over his forehead and upper lip, Jared Fletcher was desperately insistent. “You must listen…now! When we devised the plan of the pirate attack in the Caribbean, I charted my course carefully in order to have the attack occur near a habitable island. I knew guano ships would eventually pass by. I only wanted you to remain there long enough to cast doubt on Starr’s fidelity. With your reputation with women, Barret, Caroline chose you to be the third of that party. I never knew until today, until she ordered me to take her away or be implicated as her accomplice, that she’d murdered her husband.”

  “She murdered Randall?” My breath caught in my throat.

  Jared began to cough wretchedly. Barret took up a towel and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  “I couldn’t believe what was happening on the Linnet when those barbarians began to molest Starr,” he wheezed. “I think Caroline instructed Simon to violate her to cast doubt on the paternity of any child she might have. She didn’t confide that fact to me.”

  “Do you know if she hired Simon to shoot Starr in Halifax?” Barret questioned.

  “She must have, although she never told me so,” he rasped. “She was probably afraid Colin and Starr’s being together again might result in a pregnancy. I do know Simon followed you that night and saw where you went. He later told that dockside butcher who Starr really was. Simon even assured him that if he would say he performed an abortion on her, they could blackmail Abe Douglas the next time he came to Halifax.”

  Minutes after, as Jared was drifting off into unconsciousness, he clutched at Barret’s arm and spoke with great effort.

  “I loved her, Barret,” he wheezed, sweat pouring over his face. “You must believe that to understand what I did. I wanted to be her husband and I wanted to be Abe’s commodore, and all they both did was use me until there was nothing left inside me, not decency, not even loyalty to a friend. They destroyed me, Barret. But they couldn’t destroy you. Don’t let them. Swear to me you won’t let them…”

  His lacerated fingers dug deep into Barret’s flesh.

  “I swear,” Barret said. “Now rest.”

  “No, no, I must finish my confession!” He broke off, choking, then continued desperately, “Do you know why I spread the news of Abe’s failure in the village? He accused me of being responsible. He said I’d mismanaged his fleet, that you wouldn’t have made the mistakes I had. He said one of the major reasons his creditors in London had foreclosed was because they had learned Captain Barret Madison, who’d made that celebrated January crossing, was no longer in command. I couldn’t stand it, Barret. I’d worked my guts out for that vicious old man, and that was how he repaid me. So I played Judas. And all because of a woman who used me for stud service.”

  Jared’s eyes were closing. “I loved her, and I killed her,” he whispered. “I wanted his respect, and I betrayed him.” His eyes shut. An hour later he was dead.

  ****

  Shrouded in encroaching dusk and thickening mist, Barret and I buried Jared and Caroline in a common grave in an obscure corner of the Presbyterian cemetery.

  “The villagers wouldn’t approve of our burying them here, if they knew what they’d done,” Barret said, leaning wearily on his shovel. “But since Jared truly loved Caroline, laying them to rest together can’t be wrong. I’ll see to it that Bridgit is placed beside Randall when her time comes.”

  ”Yes.”

  “It’s been a long day.” Barret slipped an arm about my sagging shoulders. “Tomorrow, when the rioting quiets, I’ll return to Peacock House and take care of burying…Father.”

  Together we turned toward the village and in the same instant saw the unearthly glow piercing the fog.

  “My God!” Barret breathed. “They’ve set fire to Peacock House. Father will be burned!”

  Flinging the shovel aside, he started down the darkening trail at a full run.

  “Barret!” I cried, pursuing him. “Your father’s dead. There’s nothing you can do for him now.”

  But he had outdistanced my words. All I could do was race down the misty trail behind him. I had not yet found the courage to tell him his father, on his deathbed, had confessed to murder.

  ****

  The village was a bedlam of enraged, drink-reddened faces and savage roars. Many of the rioters carried lighted torches and flasks of rum. Several drunken horsemen, careless of the safety of pedestrians, were galloping foaming, wild-eyed horses through the melee.

  Looters had already smashed the windows from all Douglas buildings save the mercantile. The shipyard, too, was undergoing pilfering. I didn’t pause to think about it. I had to find Barret.

  As I ran past an alley between the Black Horse Inn and a shop, I heard a muted scream. Glancing into the shadows, I saw Meg, her dress torn from one shoulder, being held against a plank wall and mauled by a massive sailor. It was not a night for any woman to be abroad alone in Pine.

  I grabbed a broken plank from a doorframe and rushed to her aid. A well-placed blow took the brute to his knees, and a second rendered him unconscious. For a moment, Meg and I, breasts heaving, stood over his inert body. Then I flung the board to the ground and took off at a run toward Peacock House.

  “Starr, no! You must go home! It’s not safe!” Meg screamed after me, but I ignored her and raced up the street toward the flaming mansion.

  A great crowd had assembled in the dooryard. I saw Jacob Carruthers at the head of the mob, laughing as the manor burned.

  “I shot him, and I’m glad!” he bellowed. “Now I’m watching him burn! Abe Douglas took the land that was my living from me. My baby starved and my wife died of misery. Now he’s tasting the kind of Hell he made for so many others!”

  “Starr!” I whirled to see Bridgit pushing toward me through the maddened crowd. “Captain Madison went into the house. Make him come out! The roof is about to collapse!”

  I burst through the circle of celebrating humanity and rushed into the heat and smoke billowing from the front entrance. Great tongues of flame burst out of the upper-story windows, timbers snapped and groaned, and suddenly, with a mighty cracking, the roof caved in.

  “Barret!” I screamed as a great blast of heat burst out upon me. I staggered backward, away from the inferno.

  A tall, broad-shouldered figure carrying a body in his arms appeared in what was left of the doorway. Seconds later, my husband collapsed beside me, the back of his shirt in flames, the body of his dead father clutched in his arms.

  The house, with a final roar, split apart and thundered into a fiery heap that would smolder for days before it finally gave up.

  ****

  The following morning, when hangovers and exhaustion from the night’s debauched catharsis had cooled outrage and passions, Barret and I set out to bury his father.

  Alone, Barret dug in the hard, resisting earth, sweat drenching his face and chest. He would not allow me to help. His back beneath a thin, worn shirt was a raw mass of burned and oozing flesh, but I could not stop him.

  Gradually townspeople began to trickle up the hill to encircle the yawning hole and the sheet-swathed body beside it.

  “Old Abe wasn’t all bad,” I heard someone murmur. “He got us a church and a school, an
d he threw the best launching parties this side of the Atlantic.”

  Several came forward to help Barret lift the bundle that had been Abraham Douglas and lower it into the earth.

  “Farewell, Father,” Barret said, as he straightened up. His jaw flinched with a nervous twitch, his expression as iron.

  “Father!” The murmur rippled through the crowd.

  “Abraham was Captain Madison’s father,” I said, my voice shaking, as I turned to face the villagers. “Thank you for coming. Now perhaps we should leave him alone with his grief.”

  The astounded group turned, one by one, and walked slowly back the way they had come, whispers and murmurs of amazed discussion marking their departure. Leaving Barret alone with the man he had finally been able to call Father, I followed.

  At sunset Barret came home. I was sitting by the hearth rocking Colin to sleep when he entered our cabin and knelt before us.

  “I love you,” he said hoarsely. “I love you both so much. I realize now that it is the three of us who are my family, and I’m ready to devote myself to our future together.”

  The next morning, Barret and I walked through the ragged remains of the village. The Douglas offices and shipyards resembled spent battlefields. A half-built ship had been ripped apart in its slip in the shipyard and lay canted on one side like a massive, vulture-stripped carcass. The doors of the buildings along the main street hung open, many on a single remaining hinge. Windows had been shattered. Papers and records from Abraham’s offices scuttled about the muddy ruts of the street whenever a breeze wafted through the devastation, including mortgage agreements and indenture files destroyed forever. Many in the valley would have their first genuine taste of freedom.

  The mercantile alone stood unscathed, a monument to the kindnesses of Ben Smith. The old man stood in the doorway and shook his head sadly as we passed. The town he’d founded with such high hopes was in a shambles.

  “Our legacy,” Barret said wryly, as we paused to survey the damage. Last night I’d told him of his father’s deathbed will. Suddenly a breeze, warm in spite of the heavy gray cloud cover, touched my cheek with soft, reassuring fingers.

  “Barret, look!” I breathed, as my gaze fell on the river.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Barret muttered.

  Riding at anchor beyond the sadly tattered, wharf-moored Douglas fleet, the Maris Stella floated proud and unviolated.

  “Your legacy, Captain,” I said, taking his arm.

  “Our legacy,” he said, looking down at me with bright, eager eyes. “Let’s go out to her. I need to feel her beneath my feet today.”

  ****

  The following morning, Johnny Kelly drove up to our cabin, a large blanket-swathed cargo in the back of his farm wagon.

  “Welcome, Johnny,” Barret said, as we came out of the cabin together to greet him. “How are your wife and daughter?”

  “Heather and little Starr are in fine fettle, Captain,” he said leaping down from the high seat. I recalled how Colin had gotten Randall to attend the baby’s birth. “I’ve brought you and your wife something I saved from the fire the other night,” he continued, climbing back into the wagon. He swung back the blanket to reveal Colin’s piano and bench.

  “How?” Barret asked in amazement as he went forward to examine the instrument.

  “I knew what it meant to him,” Johnny said shyly. “Once, when I went to the house with a message, I heard him play. I told him how fine his music was, and he said, ‘It’s my life.’ When I saw the house in flames, I knew I had to save what he’d loved best. I smashed those glass doors at the side of the mansion that led into the room where it sat, threw its bench atop it, and shoved it on its wheels out onto the verandah and down the steps. I fear I may have damaged it somewhat, but it couldn’t be helped.”

  I rushed to the bashful young man and threw my arms about his neck.

  “Thank you so much, Johnny. Barret and I will treasure what your kindness and bravery have saved for us.”

  Johnny helped Barret shove and maneuver the heavy instrument into our cabin, then left.

  When we were alone, Barret ran his hand over its polished wood.

  “He loved this thing,” he said. “He used to say it was an old and trusted friend who helped him hold onto what he loved most when he felt his whole world slipping away from him. Before his mother died, they’d sit together on its bench while he played and she sang. He told me that as a child he’d kept his most treasured toys inside its bench. He said he’d believed they were safe because they were with his friend.”

  He bent and tried to raise the seat’s lid.

  “It’s locked,” he said, surprised.

  He took a knife from the sideboard and pried the delicate lock. When it gave, he lifted the cover to reveal musical scores, all written in Colin’s carefully detailed style.

  “Sweet Jesus!” he breathed. “This is where he kept his original compositions.”

  He removed several, closed the lid, and seated himself at the keyboard.

  “Magnificent,” Barret breathed when he paused in his playing a half hour later. “Even on this instrument that desperately needs tuning after the abuse it’s suffered, it’s obvious these are the works of a genius.”

  I put my arm about his shoulders, too moved to reply. The music Barret had played had been the creations of a man of great talent.

  “We must have them published,” Barret said. “Colin’s music belongs to the world. I’ll take them to Vienna, where they’ll be most appreciated.”

  He arose and dropped to one knee to reopen the lid and again examine its contents. On the bottom of the bench chest lay a sealed envelope addressed to me.

  “Open it,” Barret said, placing it in my hands.

  I did as he instructed and read aloud.

  My dearest and most beautiful friend, Starr, I will be dead when you read this…each day suicide seems more and more the only answer to my mangled life…but I cannot go in peace until you know the truth; the truth which is not that you were undesirable, but that you, even in your beauty, were only undesirable to me. My sexual preference does not run to women, my darling, you see. My father has called me a demented pervert, but I cannot help myself. Today, by the river, I tried, oh, dear God how I tried, but even if Barret had not interrupted us, I know I could not have made myself your lover or fathered a child. I loved once and fully. My lover was Darcy Pod.

  “Dear God!” Barret breathed as he read over my shoulder. “He wanted you to know, after all.”

  My eyes had blurred with shock. What was this madness? Darcy and Colin—lovers? Dear, dear God!

  Finally I regained my courage and read on.

  We both loved you as a dear sister, Starr, Colin’s words continued. But my music and his poetry bound us together in body and spirit. We cared for each other as I realize Barret cares for you. Barret knows of my preference. He’s tried to understand. Please do the same, Starr. And when I’m gone, marry Barret. He’s a truly good man who will give you a man’s love and children and all the things I can’t. Farewell, sweet sister. Remember always, Darcy and I loved you as best we could.

  On an attached sheet was Darcy’s story as he had told it to Colin. Early in his life, Sir Harry’s son Charles had recognized his tendency. He’d taken Darcy from the mines and made him his lover. Thus was explained Charles’ reluctance to marry. Through compliance to Charles’ wishes, Darcy had secured my release from the mines and, later, his passage to America.

  Then Darcy had met Colin. It had been their love of music and poetry that had drawn them together. Then one night they’d discovered a deeper attraction.

  The story, in Colin’s hand, continued:

  One night my father, in searching for me, came to Darcy’s cabin. In our passion, we’d forgotten to bar the door. As we lay upon the bed, he burst in. I shall never forget Father’s stricken expression. Speechless from shock, he paused only a moment before he staggered like a drunken man from the cabin.

  The next mo
rning Darcy, a revolver in his hand, was found dead. His death was declared to be suicide. I knew he’d been murdered, and by whom.

  I pretended nothing had happened. Father did likewise. When I married, I think he felt he’d done the right thing and had succeeded in quelling my perversities. I tried to change my ways, too. Today, in the meadow I made a valiant effort to perform properly. But I failed, as I will always fail to be aroused by a woman.

  Ill with shock, I refolded the letter and handed it to Barret. In my distress, I forgot I had not told him of his father’s deathbed confession.

  “Sweet Jesus, Father murdered that boy!” he breathed. “He shot the lad for being different. And all my life I would have given my soul for the love and respect of that brutal old man! All those years wasted on longing to be called son—by a remorseless killer.”

  He went to stare out the window into the bright sunlight of a spring day.

  “The dream of having a father and a home and a family is a wonderful vision,” I said softly. “That’s all you ever wanted. No matter what Abraham Douglas did, nothing can change that fact.”

  “And my dream has come to reality,” he said, turning to look into my eyes.

  “You knew about Colin’s…preference…all along, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “While we were in Vienna, he had a relationship. I confronted him and tried to convince him it was wrong. He broke down and cried. He was what he was, he said, and I either must accept him or turn away from our friendship forever.

  “When he married you, I hoped he’d changed. His behavior on several occasions gave me reason to believe he had. But he hadn’t. And never would. After a deal of soul searching I decided I shouldn’t sit in judgment on others. I couldn’t tell you,” he continued. “I hadn’t the courage or the words. I couldn’t tell you about a world you probably didn’t even know existed…a world where men made love to men.”

  “But Colin and Darcy, in love, sharing a bed…”

  “Hush, hush,” he said, holding me. “Remember Colin and Darcy as you knew them—talented, compassionate young men who loved you as best they could.”